"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness, and our ability to tell our own stories..."
- Arundhati Roy

THIS BLOG is NOW RETIRED

I began this blog in May 2009 following the death of Marcia Powell at Perryville State Prison in Goodyear, Arizona. It is not intended to prescribe the path that leads to freedom from the prison industrial complex.

Rather, these are just my observations in arguably the most racist, fascist, militaristic state in the nation at a critical time in history for a number of intersecting liberation movements. From Indigenous resistance to genocidal practices, to the fight over laws like SB1070 and the ban on Ethnic Studies, Arizona is at the center of many battles for human rights, and thus the struggle for prison abolition as well - for none are free until all are. I retired the blog in APRIL 2013.

David Rovics: We Are Everywhere

To my fellow activists now struggling through life - let this be a reminder that you are not alone and that we desperately need you here. All the injustice, grief, war, and human suffering calls for us to stay and do everything we can about it - you can't help us anymore when you're gone. Don't give up the fight - your last shred of hope may just keep someone else alive, too.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

By Jeffrey Haas, The Nation
Posted on December 2, 2009, Printed on December 3, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144283/

December 4 marks the fortieth anniversary of the raid on a Black Panther apartment in which Chicago police shot and killed Fred Hampton in his bed. Hampton was the charismatic young chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party, and under his leadership the party's membership and influence had increased dramatically. The party had instituted a popular and expanding Breakfast for Children Program and a police accountability project. At the age of 21, Hampton was able to reach and influence gang members and welfare mothers as well as college and law students. Under his tutelage, the Panthers formed a coalition with Puerto Rican and white activists.

The response of the Chicago police and the ambitious Cook County state's attorney, Edward Hanrahan, the likely political heir to then-Mayor Richard J. Daley, was to harass and arrest the Panthers as often as possible. The police even opened fire on Panther headquarters.

Six hours after the predawn raid on Hampton's apartment, conducted by fourteen Chicago policemen armed with shotguns, handguns, a rifle and a .45-caliber submachine gun, Hanrahan went on TV to give the police version. He claimed the Panthers, and Hampton in particular, had opened fire on the police, who he said were innocently serving a search warrant for weapons, and that the Panthers continued firing despite several police attempts at a cease-fire.

I was the first person to interview the survivors in the police lockup, where Hampton's crying and pregnant fiancée told me that after she was pulled from the room, police came in and fired two shots into Hampton and said, "He's good and dead now." The autopsy showed he had been shot twice in the head at point-blank range. My colleagues went to the raid scene, examined the bullet holes and found that the trajectory of all the bullets except one was from the direction of the police toward the Panthers. Later, an FBI firearms expert testified that more than eighty shots were fired by the police at the Panthers, with only one coming from a Panther. That one shot was fired in a vertical direction by a falling Mark Clark after he had been fatally wounded.

Two years after the murder, antiwar activists raided the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and found and distributed documents that demonstrated that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was conducting a secret war on the left -- the Counterintelligence Program, or Cointelpro. Its most aggressive and lethal tactics were used against the black movement, and the Panthers in particular. Cointelpro mandated FBI agents in cities with Panther chapters to "cripple," "disrupt" and "destroy" the Panthers and their breakfast program and to prevent the rise of a "messiah" who could unify and electrify the black masses.

In 1969 I was a young, newly radicalized lawyer, one of the founders of a collective called the People's Law Office, which represented the Panthers. After successfully defending the survivors of the raid against bogus criminal charges, we filed a civil rights suit against the police and the prosecutor, and later the FBI. My book, The Assassination of Fred Hampton, chronicles our long legal and political struggle to uncover the truth about the FBI's role in the killing. After thirteen years of litigation, we proved that the raid was a Cointelpro operation. FBI agents in Chicago gave Hanrahan and the Chicago police a floor plan of Hampton's apartment, which included the location of the bed where Hampton would be sleeping. They urged Hanrahan to conduct the raid and later took credit for it in internal documents. The FBI informant who provided the floor plan was given a bonus because his information was deemed to be of "tremendous value" to what one agent referred to as the "success" of the raid.

Noam Chomsky has called the murder of Fred Hampton "the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon Administration." It is hard to imagine a more serious abuse by a government than the deliberate assassination of a citizen for his political beliefs and activity. But though we were finally able to reveal that Hampton's death had been an assassination, it has never gotten the attention it deserves. The government's cover-up and stonewalling basically worked.

Following Watergate and numerous revelations in the early 1970s about intelligence agencies run amok, the Senate's Church Committee was formed to investigate such intelligence abuses as assassination plots and spying on U.S. citizens [see Christopher Hayes, "The Secret Government"]. After documenting Cointelpro's secret and illegal attacks on the left, the committee sought to guarantee FBI and CIA accountability by requiring Congressional oversight, including reporting of intelligence activities. The two strongest opponents of this oversight in the Ford administration were the chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld's deputy, Dick Cheney. Together with Antonin Scalia, who was then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, they persuaded Ford to veto legislation expanding the Freedom of Information Act to cover intelligence documents. Fortunately Congress overrode the veto.

Three decades later we are watching history repeat itself. In the 1960s the enemy was domestic dissent; today the enemy is international terrorism. In both cases, however, the right used fear to increase the powers of police and government agencies to operate in secret and with impunity. Cheney and Rumsfeld used 9/11 to beat back Church Committee restrictions on intelligence activities and reporting requirements. They encouraged intelligence agencies to spy on U.S. citizens and to ignore international and U.S. law forbidding torture and kidnapping.

In 1978 the Justice Department argued that FBI operatives were immune from liability for killing Hampton because they were carrying out government policy. An incredulous Judge Swygert asked the U.S. Attorney if he thought they would be immune if they had given the police a gun and told them to murder Hampton. The government retreated from the "good German" defense at that point. In our own day, Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed a special prosecutor to look into the acts of torture carried out by CIA officers amid claims they are immune because they were carrying out government policy.

One lesson we should learn from the Hampton case is that although it's important to put strong legal limitations on what police and intelligence agencies are permitted to do, that is not enough to prevent abuses. What's required is accountability, in the form of criminal prosecution, not only for those who carry out criminal policies but for those who formulate them. Thus far Holder's investigation is limited to those who carried out the policy of torture and may have exceeded its carefully hedged strictures. But the investigation we really need will look at the policy itself, which by all appearances was a criminal conspiracy by Cheney, Rumsfeld and a group of administration lawyers to subvert the Constitution.

Fred Hampton's legacy should be our continued vigilance against government crimes and secrecy and our demand that officials be held responsible and criminally liable when they violate the law. This is about deterrence and equal justice, not revenge. Jeffrey Haas, a civil rights attorney, is the author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther, published in November 2009.

Homeless in Phoenix: Know Your Rights

Support Food Not Bombs!

"Food Not Bombs (FNB) is a grassroots movement that believes we could end hunger throughout the world by putting all the resources spent on the war machine into the mouths of the hungry instead. If we spent the same amount of money our government spends on war, on food instead, we could feed every person in the world three meals a day. In addition to opposing war, we are also against the enormous amount of waste Americans create. To fight the vast waste of perfectly good food, we salvage food that would otherwise be tossed. If you are interested in preparing food with us, please give us a holler! We encourage anyone to be our friend on here who supports the FNB movement and is interested in cooking and serving with us."

Resist SB 1070

Coalition de Derechos Humanos

Know your rights fliers (English and Spanish)

Change This...

Report: AZ has ten times the number of people with mental illness in prisons/jails as in hospitals.

Sunbelt Justice, by Mona Lynch

Well-researched account of the history of punishment in Arizona, and its effect on the rest of the country. Essential tool for AZ Justice and Human Rights Activists. Request from your local library - if they don't have it, ask them to order it.

Revolutionary Solidarity is the Secret That Destroys All Walls

"The whole experience has been tough, but all the kind and strengthening words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much easier!" (Former Swedish Animal Rights Prisoner)

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORKELP is an international eco-prisoner support network founded, in Britain, in 1993 to support jailed eco-activists. We support the prisoners by producing various regular prisoner lists:

Spirit of Freedom is ELP's international monthly prisoner listing which is circulated by e-mail.

Urgent ELP! Bulletin is an e-mail service that distributes the names of any new eco-prisoner as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e-mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCESome people listed in this newsletter have carried out violent actions including assault and murder. 'Spirit of Freedom' does not condone violence. But we are also against censorship & believe people can decide for themselves who they wish to support.---------------------------------Welcome to the August 2009 edition of Spirit of Freedom. As ELP goes to print we are still anxiously awaiting news of Justin Solondz. As previously reported in Spirit of Freedom, in mid-June ELP learnt that the American environmentalist, Justin Solondz, who is wanted by the FBI in connection totheir investigation which led to the Green Scare Trials in both Oregon and Washington, has been arrested in China. Since then ELP has not heard anything more about Justin. If anyone has any information on Justin and where he is currently being held then please let ELP know.

The arrest of Justin, in China, is a good reminder to us all of the importance of the international prisoner support movement and how people can be jailed in any country anywhere around the world. In the past ELP has listed prisoners in North America, Latin America, Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, Asia and Australasia. In fact the only continent ELP has never listed a prisoner from is Antarctica!!! As our prisoner lists always show, the cause for Earth/Animal Liberation is international. So please, regardless of what languages you speak and regardless of where you live inthe world, please support the eco-prisoners and no compromise in defence of Mother Earth!

If anyone notices any of ELP's prisoner details is out of date or we do not list a prisoner who we should list, please let ELP know as soon as possible. ELP is run by a small group of volunteers and although we try to ensure our lists are accurate, we admit we do make mistakes. So help us help keep the lists accurate by letting us know of any changes we need to make.----------------------

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Grant Barnes #137563, San Carlos Correctional Facility, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serving 12 years for setting fire to a number of SUV vehicles. The letters ELF were spray painted onto all of the vehicles. (Grant is a vegan).

Marco Camenisch, Postfach 3143, CH-8105 Regensdorf, Switzerland. Serving 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explosives to destroy electricity pylons leading from nuclear power stations. 2) Eight years for the murder of a Swiss Boarder Guard whilst on the run. In '02 Marco completed a 12-year sentence in Italy for destroying electricity pylons in Italy. (Marco is a meat eater who encourages organic living).

Maura Harringon, Dochas Centre, Mountjoy Gaol, North Circular Road, Dublin 7, Republic of Ireland. Jailed for non-payment of a fine. The fine was issued following Maura's involvement in an anti-Shell petrol company protest. (Diet unknown).

Jonatan. E-mail messages of support to freejonatan@yahoo.se A 20-year old Swedish man sentenced to 15 months imprisonment after admitting damaging a communication tower used by the Department of Defence, cutting the cables on a crane used in creating urban sprawl, and damaging a vehicle used in the logging industry. Jonatan is currently on bail as he appeals his sentence (Jonatan is a vegan).

Jeffrey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sunderland Ave, Portland, OR 97211-1708, USA. Serving 10 years for arson on a SUV dealership & the attempted arson of an oil truck. The original sentence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Marie Jeanette Mason, #04672-061, FCI Waseca, Federal Correctional Institution, PO Box 1731, Waseca, MN 56093, USA. Serving 21 years and 10 months for her involvement in an ELF arson against a University building carrying out Genetically Modified crop tests. Marie also pleaded guilty toconspiring to carry out ELF actions and admitted involvement in 12 other ELF actions. (Marie is a vegan).

Eric McDavid, 16209-097, FCI Victorville, Medium II, Federal Correctional Institution, PO Box 5300, Adelanto, CA 92301, USA. Serving 19 years & 7 months for planning to destroy the property of the U.S. Forestry Service, mobile phone masts and power plants. At the point of his arrest no criminal damage has actually occurred. (Eric is a vegan).

Daniel McGowan, 63794-053, USP Marion, US Penitentiary, PO Box 1000, Marion, IL 62959, USA. Serving 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth logging corporation. Also admitted his role in an ELF/ALF conspiracy. (Daniel is a vegetarian).

Kevin Olliff, #1300931, TTCF 161 D-Pod, 450 Bauchet St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, USA. On remand accused of stalking. Exact details of the indictment have not yet been revealed but the charges appear to relate to a person employed by an educational facility so may be linked to vivisection. (Kevinis a vegan).

Jonathan Paul, #07167-085, FCI Phoenix, Federal Correctional Institution, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sentenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admitted his role in an ELF/ALFconspiracy. (Jonathan is a vegan).

William James Viehl, Inmate #2009-05735, Davis County Jail, 800 West State St., Farmington, UT 84025, USA. On Remand accused of raiding a mink farm. Also accused of breaching bail conditions whilst on bail. (William is avegan).

The Lecce Defendants have been charged with "subversive association" accused of damaging Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sabotaging the cash machines of a bank which funds an immigration centre; and targeting the multinational company Benetton in support of Mapuche land rights activistsin Chile. All of the defendants are currently either under house arrest or released on bail.

Pavel Delidon, ul. Timiryazeva-1, FGU IK-7, 309990 Valuyki Russia. Anarchist/Animal Rights activist jailed for attempting to obtain wages owed to him, but which had not been paid to him by his employer. IMPORTANT: Pavel can only receive letters written in Russian. He is punished by the prison if he receives a letter not written in Russian so please, only send letters written in Russian. (Diet unknown).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serving 15 months for bomb hoaxing a University saying they would be targeted by the ALF if they didn't stop their animal experiments. (Diet unknown).

Fran Thompson, #1090915, CCC, 3151 Litton Drive, Chillicuthe, MO 64601, USA. Serving Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalker who had broken into her home. Before her imprisonment Fran was an eco, animal & anti-nukecampaigner. (Fran is a vegan).

MOVE

MOVE is an eco-revolutionary group who carried out protests in defence of all life. All move prisoners describe themselves as vegetarians. There are currently eight MOVE activists in prison each serving 100 years after been framed for the murder of a cop in 1979. 9th defendant, Merle Africa, diedin prison in 1998.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, former Black Panther and vocal supporter of MOVE, was framed for the murder of a cop. He was originally sentenced to death but is currently awaiting re-sentencing following a court hearing in2001.

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Just three weeks after signing a highly controversial anti-immigrant bill that orders police officers to stop and interrogate anyone they suspect is an undocumented immigrant, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed a new law banning ethnic studies in Arizona public schools. The law could shut down a popular Mexican American studies program in the Tucson school district. It will also affect specialized courses in African American and Native American studies. In response, students have taken to the streets to voice their opposition to the bill. On Wednesday, fifteen people, most of them students, were arrested protesting the law at the state offices of education in Tucson.

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Women Behind the Wall: What Happened to Marcia Powell?

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2004 Report: Arizona Prison Crisis

National Lawyers Guild

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November Coalition: Razor Wire

Union del Barrio

MigrantWatch

"The greatest challenge that many societies face around the world, is the relentless and implacable rise of violence against migrants."